Steel World (34 page)

“What the hell happened here?” Leeson screamed at my side. He reached out, grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. “You were guarding this equipment, soldier! Report!”

“It had to be the lizards, sir. We never left our post. They came through the back wall. They might have had help—or there was a preexisting tunnel back there. I can’t believe they drilled it that fast, and that quietly.”

Leeson looked up, we all did. The bombardment had stopped.

“Cover,” he said. “The artillery was cover. They hit us hard for a few minutes, long enough to get into the chamber and take our machine.” He shook his head. “We have to seal this up.”

Leeson turned to a trio of weaponeers he’d brought down with him. I recognized Sargon among them. I knew right away his plan must have been to burn the door down if we couldn’t get it open. Risky, but as it turned out, it could have been the right move.

“We have to seal this up. We can’t have them getting in behind us.”

Three bio specialists pushed past me and began checking the fallen. They gave up quickly on everyone except Kivi.

“Is she going to make it?” I asked them.

“Maybe,” they said noncommittally. They carried Kivi up the stairs as I watched. I felt shocked and little sick to see them all taken out like this.

“But sir,” I said, following Adjunct Leeson, “what about the dead? We can’t revive them now…are they going up to the ship?”

He shook his head slowly. “I would guess not. Their data was here, and we only had the one copy. They’ve been permed. There’s nothing we can do.”

I stared with my mouth hanging open. I looked at the bodies all over again as if really seeing them for the first time. Natasha and
Specialist Grant had been
permed
? That couldn’t be… We all died now and then, sure, but we always came back.

“Sir?” I called, catching his eye while the weaponeers set up tripods and calibrated their weapons. At this short range, they had to be careful or they’d be consumed by the back-blast.

He glanced at me but turned away.

“Sir? Adjunct Leeson?”

“Recruit, it happens. Only one machine has your data at a given time. That’s the rule. If the machine is wiped out before a copy can be transferred—so are you.”

“What about the rest of them? The people who got hit during the bombardment?”

“The moment the com link was cut with the revival unit, the command post reported that to the ship. It’s all automated. We can die down here safely now, and just about everyone who died in the bombardment should be in the clear.”

“Did we lose the data or something?” I asked. “Why don’t we have backups?”

“To prevent illegal duplication. Only one unit is assigned to be a legitimate revival point per file. Once we lost contact, we could legally transfer the duty up to
Corvus
. They’re probably reviving right now aboard ship.”

I thought about that. It was something of a relief to know I wasn’t in line to be permed next. But I thought of my friends in there again, who’d all just been eviscerated. I couldn’t leave them like that. Not if there was a chance.

“Sir, I volunteer to go after the lizards,” I said. “If I can get the data chip back from that revival unit, we can make the transfer and these people will live again.”

Adjunct Leeson said a few more words to the weaponeers, then turned, sucked in a big breath and put a hand on my shoulder. “You have to let them go, son,” he said. “I know it’s hard. I’ve done it before.”

“They can’t have gone far, sir. That machine is a bastard to move. I should know.”

“It’s not just about that,” he said. “I have a unit to command now.”

I stared at him. “What about Graves?” I asked. “He was hit early. He was permed too, wasn’t he?”

This seemed to startle him. I realized as I said it that he hadn’t thought of that detail. He’d only considered the people in the room at the time of the attack. But they weren’t the only ones who’d been erased today.

Leeson didn’t answer me right away. He looked like he was thinking hard.

“The bombardment began before the com link to the chamber went down, didn’t it?” I asked quietly. “You said Graves was dead in the first salvo. His data didn’t transfer. He’s gone.”

Adjunct Leeson’s eyes slid up to meet mine. I saw real worry there. I could tell he didn’t think he was ready to fill Centurion Graves’ shoes. I had to admit, I didn’t think he was either. Graves really knew what he was doing.

“You really want to go into that hole?” he asked me. “They’ll be commandos, you know. Real fighters. Not a pack of naked hunters like we met out in the jungle.”

I nodded. I knew what he meant.

“I fought a real lizard regular right here in this building. That alien knew how to fight—and how to die.”

“All right,” he said. “I can’t fault a man for wanting to save his commander. In fact, I’m impressed, McGill. Maybe you aren’t the screw-up I thought you were. Graves always thought you were something special, but I didn’t see his point that until now.”

He pointed into the hole, which was smoking less but still pitch-black inside. “Go get them, boys.”

“Boys?” asked Carlos. He’d been watching and listening quietly all this time. “Oh
sure, I get it. Make a big attempt to talk McGill out of it, but Carlos—forget it. Hell, you can throw Carlos off a cliff if you want to. The whole unit would be better off.”

“Shut up and get going. They could be gone already. I’m giving you one hour then I’m sealing this hole with hot steel. They won’t even be able to drill through.”

I stepped toward the hole, and Carlos followed, complaining all the way.

Then another figure loomed up behind us. It was none other than Weaponeer Sargon. I grinned when I saw him.

“Did Leeson order you onto this death-hunt?” Carlos asked. “That prick. One day you should miss with that big cannon of yours and nail him.”

“No, fool,” Sargon said. “I
wanted to come. I didn’t like the idea of McGill getting all the glory.”

We stepped through the ragged hole one at a time, with me leading and Sargon bringing up the rear.

“Glory?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I used to be known as the craziest guy in this unit. Now, I’m like some kind of accountant or something. ‘No one tries harder to get himself permed than James McGill’—that’s what I hear all the time now. The worst part is: it’s true.”

“Permed?” Carlos asked. “Who said anything about getting permed? I thought our data was transferred up to the
Corvus
.”

Sargon laughed roughly. “Yeah, sure. But without a confirmed death, they can’t legally revive any of us. You know that.”

Carlos cursed quietly for a long time as we made our way down into the tunnel. Behind us, the big door to the vault clanged shut. I knew they’d wait to burn the mouth of the tunnel closed—but only for an hour.

-26-

“Do you even frigging know what the data component looks like on a revival unit?” Carlos demanded.

It was the second or third time he’d asked, so I figured I might as well answer. He wasn’t going to shut up no matter what I did.

“No, I don’t, but it should be in the main panel. If we can get the copy back, then they can reconstruct everyone whose signature is on it.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s how this is going to work. Do you even have a computer at home? I mean, if you ripped part of it out, it may or may not be readable. Damaged data means a damaged grow, and it’s all over.”

“What’s all over?” Sargon said.

“They are. The people we are risking our necks to save. My point is, we don’t know if this mission can be completed even if we do everything right.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sargon said. “You want to go back and hide in the complex, don’t you? Let me tell you, those walls won’t be any fun in an hour or two. The lizards are deploying all around us. They’re going to march right in and take us out, down to the last man.”

“If they do that, they won’t win the contract,” I said. “Using a million troops against a few thousand doesn’t prove anything.”

“I don’t even think they care about that anymore,” Sargon said. “They haven’t used air yet, but they are pouring it on otherwise. This is about pride and honor now. We’ve embarrassed them, and they have to save face.”

I had to admit he had a point.

“Wait a minute,” Carlos said, halting.

Sargon bumped into him and made a sound of disgust.

We were pretty far down the tunnel now but hadn’t found anything—not even a fork in the road. The tunnel gently twisted and curved but didn’t seem to lead anywhere in particular. I’d begun to
think they’d dug it recently, after all: maybe when we’d started the attack on the terminal. It might have been drilled originally as an escape tunnel, but after we’d taken the building, they’d decided to use it as a secret method of attack instead.

“Wait just one minute,” Carlos said, as if getting an idea he didn’t like.

“What now?” I asked.

“The data might be stored organically. Did you think of that? We don’t know squat about this machine. Absolute zero. But we do know it is alien and organic. If the data is stored inside some kind of ten-pound hind-brain, we are righteously screwed. We’ll never retrieve it, and we’ll never be able to read it if we do.”

“Carlos,” I said, “you’re right. This might not work, but I think it’s worth a try. We’re talking about Natasha, the bio, Graves and maybe Kivi, too. You like Kivi, don’t you?”

“Oh, hell yeah. Every guy in the unit does.”

“Well, then, I’ll lie and tell her that you demanded we go in and save her—just her.”

Carlos brightened. “You’d do that?”

“Yes, I sure would.”

A heavy hand reached down from the shadows and slapped Carlos’ helmet.

“I’ll back up that lie,” Sargon said, “if you’ll shut the hell up.”

“You’ve got it, friend! I know when I’ve said enough. No one has to tell me twice. I’ll—”

I heard a thud and grunt. Carlos fell silent. I wasn’t sure what Weaponeer Sargon had done to him, but I was grinning anyway.

We finally heard sounds in front of us. They were baffling at first—then I realized what they must be: sounds of metal scraping against metal.

I whispered into my helmet, which was linked to the others. No one could hear us beyond our small team as these walls wouldn’t let anything through.

“They’re ahead of us,” I said.

Sargon immediately took command. I didn’t argue. He had the rank and the experience. He moved quietly for such a big man. In a crouch, he edged up next to me. We all squatted and peered around the next bend in the tunnel. We had our visors dialed for infrared, but we couldn’t see anything—not yet.

“I’d love to take them all out with my cannon,” he said, hefting the tube on his shoulder, “but I can’t risk hitting the machine. Why the hell are they dragging it down here, anyway? They can’t use it, it’s calibrated for humans.”

I’d thought about that myself. “Maybe they think we’ll die without it. Maybe that was their big plan.”

“Yeah,” Sargon agreed. “They probably don’t know we can just transmit our data up to
Corvus
.”

“How do they do that?” Carlos asked.

I expected Sargon to bonk him again, but he didn’t. He turned and said: “The data in your cells is really pretty short, you know. The body is easy. It’s the mind that takes a lot of storage to get all the synapses right.”

I decided I’d take his word for it. In truth, I didn’t like thinking about medical processes much—especially not when the process involved me dying first.

“Uh...” I said. “Aren’t we going to attack, or something?”

“Not yet.”

“What are we waiting for, Specialist?”

“A big, loud noise. I think they’re stuck right now, but they’ll get the machine moving again soon. It’s too quiet right now.”

I glanced at him and nodded. I thought I knew what he was thinking.

“What are we going to do when they make this loud noise?” Carlos asked.

“We’re gonna charge in close and wipe them out—or die trying.”

“Subtle,” Carlos remarked, “but it just might work.”

Sargon turned to look at him quietly. I thought maybe Carlos had earned himself another kick. But Sargon turned back again to watch the tunnel ahead and to listen to the lizards.

We listened for several minutes. Finally, we heard them moving again. The scratching sound of the machine being dragged over the roughly drilled floor of the tunnel was loud and painful to the ears. It squeaked, groaned and clanged.

“Okay, we move on three,” said Sargon.

We all rose up into a crouch. I’d been expecting some kind of complex battle plan, but I could tell I wasn’t going to get one. We were going to race up from behind them and kill them any way we could.

“One,” said Sargon, hunching his shoulders and straightening his legs.

At least,
I thought,
he’s not asking me to go first.